Headrests for recliner chairs or seating units are of course well-known in the prior art. Such headrests are provided in "two-way" or "three-way" recliners such as exemplified in U.S. patents to Rogers No. 3,652,125 and Harrison No. 3,937,518 or in "one-way" recliners such as exemplified in U.S. patents to Bontempi et al No. 2,984,293, Kurtyka et al No. 3,996,332, and Schliepacke No. 3,147,037. In both examples, the headrest is typically mounted to the backrest to be actuated in response to movement of the chair to reclining position. Actuation of the headrest is achieved through a mechanism, typically a linkage mechanism, located in the backrest frame and extending downwardly to the base frame. In the earlier types of headrest recliners, such as disclosed in Bontempi et al U.S. Pat. No. 2,984,293, the headrests were mounted within the backrest frame to be projected in response to movement of the chair to reclining position. In later types such as disclosed in Rogers U.S. Pat. No. 3,652,125, secondary backrests with an upper headrest portion were provided on the rear side of a primary backrest. Such secondary backrests, however, increased the depth of the backrest and also prevented the chair from being placed close to a wall without the secondary backrest striking the wall when moving to extended position.
Furthermore, both types of headrest arrangements imposed certain design and dimensioning requirements of the backrest in order to accommodate the headrest mounting and actuating mechanisms within the backrest frame or rearwardly thereof. Moreover, in several of such prior art arrangements when the headrest was extended, an unsightly gap would appear in the backrest or between the backrest and the headrest. In addition, portions of the linkage would be exposed to detract from the appearance of the chair. Furthermore, such design requirements made it difficult, if not impossible, to integrate the headrest and the backrest into a common upholstery cover and hence, the headrest, when extended appeared as a part distinct from the backrest.
More recently, with the advent of "motion furniture", it has become common for motion sofas to incorporate recliner seating units. Because of the low back styling requirements of modern day sofas, headrests have been provided on recliner portions thereof in order to compensate for the low backrest styling. However, due to the design restrictions of conventional headrest arrangements as noted above, automatically actuated headrests heretofore provided for sofa units have been found to detract from the appearance of the sofa unit. The headrests heretofore available and which allowed acceptable appearance and wall proximity for sofa units have been typically manually operated. Some also suffered from inadequate back or head support requiring the addition of a pillow to provide the desired support.